For whatever reason I can't find any information on the functional aspects of the organization.
Specifically, what I'd like to know is: -What was the internal structure of the party? I found out that their was a national central committee that was the executive body, then regional 'chairmen', then local captains, lieutenants etc then the general membership. But how did that work? What did the chain of command look like? How were promotions given out?
-What was the division of labor like? Was there specialized labor (medics, speakers, writers, editors etc)? What was the role of the general membership?
-What was their educational program? I understand it was 6 weeks long, that it was required for party membership, that Guerilla Warfare by Che and The Little Red Book by Mao were required reading, but is there a syllabus or something? Did they use specific quotes from specific works? What work were students expected to do? Was there a test at the end?
-How did they decide all this?
I know this is a lot. If you can only answer a couple aspects of this, or if you can point me to resources that can, that would be great too.
You may be interested in a book that just came out:
Days of Rage: America’s Radical Underground, the FBI, and the Forgotten Age of Revolutionary Violence by Bryan Burrough.
Here is a link to an interview with the author by Terry Gross on NPR.
From the linked site:
Burrough writes about the Black Panthers, the Black Liberation Army, which is an offshoot of the Panthers, the Symbionese Liberation Army, which kidnapped Patty Hearst, the Family, which was co-founded by Tupac Shakur's stepfather and FALN, a Puerto Rican independence group. Burrough spoke to several members of these groups who had never spoken on the record before and offered new insights into how these groups operated. Burrough also spoke with retired FBI agents.
I have only listened to the NPR interview and have not read the book. However, the author talks extensively on the inner-workings of the various groups, going into enough minutiae that it made me think you could find the actual book useful.